Review: Australian Theatre Live preserves a sophisticated production of Away
Recorded by Australian Theatre Live at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House 2017, written by Michael Gow, directed by Matthew Lutton
Review by Charlotte Smee
Digital theatre, without the audience, misses a huge part of what we know and love about the art form (read Clare’s Kaleidoscope review of it here). Why, then, should we bother to record it and watch it at home?
Michael Gow’s Away is one of the most widely produced Australian plays of all time, so it only makes sense that Australian Theatre Live (ATL) have captured it for viewing on demand. It tells the story of three families losing their children in various ways, who go “away” for Christmas in 1968 and come back knowing a little more about each other and themselves.
I was one of the many Year 10 and 12 students across Australia who studied it in English. I even played feisty teenage daughter Meg in a high school production, and before I watched this recording I’d never seen it performed in its entirety. This is partly because I was too young, and too poor, to afford tickets to see it at Sydney Theatre Company when it did play, and now that I’m older we’ve moved on to a new era of Australian theatre. The cool thing about having it on a streaming service is that I can choose to watch it, and I don’t have to wait for an Artistic Director to program a new version.
Matthew Lutton’s 2017 production of the play pushes back against the kitschiness of the 60s, and replaces it with an expansive darkness, warped sound design (by J. David Franzke) and some more loose ends than the original. It brings grief to the forefront of the text - something you can’t really do in a high school study - and makes the references to Shakespeare a little more subtle. There’s definitely a tacit knowledge of the theatrical required for this production, which makes it a delightful puzzle for those who have it and a bit strange for those who don’t.
On its face, this production is an unusual choice for ATL — aimed at those who don’t have that tacit knowledge — but this may actually be a good thing. It’s likely that those of us who do have a burning love for Australian theatre are pushy enough to convince our unwitting housemates, siblings, and friends to sit down and watch Away with us (with the promise of helping to interpret it), and a very close to free recording is a much easier sell than an $80 ticket. It’s pretty special that we have a recording of a unique production of a classic Australian play that demonstrates just how much a director, and design team, can revive something as seemingly stale as a HSC English text.
After the short recorded speech from Lutton that I admittedly skipped, the play opens with Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture ringing out across a giant timber stage, with huge columns that loom like bare trees in the dark forest (by Dale Ferguson). Liam Nunan as Tom, who is playing Puck, enters dressed in a black skirt, the rest of the cast follow in white and act out a very summarised version of Shakespeare’s dream. Marco Chiappi as Oberon wears antlers as wings, and Bottom’s head is spookily skeletal. It sets the tone for tragedy — with the most serious Pyramus and Thisbe death scene I’ve ever seen and a grieving Titania (Natasha Herbert) yearning after Bottom.
There are so many threads for a director to pull in the writing of Away, and this is what makes it so brilliant. Harry (Wadih Dona) and Vic (Julia Davis) are migrants from Britain at a time when Australians didn’t even want funny sounding white people. They’re endearing, loud, not very rich and full of love for their son Tom, who we later find out is dying of cancer. Roy (Glenn Hazeldine) and Coral (also Natasha Herbert) are grieving their son who never came back from the Vietnam war, in wildly different ways. They go away to a swanky hotel and meet a young man on his honeymoon, who looks something like their lost son (and is played by the same actor who plays Tom). Gwen (Heather Mitchell) and Jim (Marco Chiappi) have a young, rebellious daughter in Meg (Naomi Rukavina) who doesn’t want to stick around to watch her mum complain about everything.
The grief thread in this production is cleverly, tenderly pulled out. Harry and Vic handle theirs with care and grace, smothering their son in cuddles, and bringing a subtle punch in the guts for a spiky Gwen who underestimates them. Coral’s character fits better here in the world of surreal grief, disconnected from reality, and from other characters. Camera angles that flick towards her and then to sideways glances of those watching her are a delight that make this recording different to watching it from the stalls. Sometimes, Gwen and Roy’s anger is overwrought, but this is solved by their quieter moments in the final scenes. The play within a play, in the form of the talent show near the ending, is also a bit mismatched to this grieving tone, and could have leaned further into the abstraction of the rest of the production.
I remember feeling odd that Tom got to read out the opening lines of King Lear at the end when I played Meg alongside him — this might have been jealousy, boredom, misunderstanding, or a mix of the three — but this production changes direction and has Meg read them instead. A close up of her face shows her slow realisation as she finishes:
“... and ‘tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburden’d, crawl towards death.”
For those of you who aren’t Shakespeare tragics like me, this is the part where King Lear explains his decision to split his kingdom between his three daughters. It’s all about passing responsibility (and trauma) down to your children, and having complete faith in them because they are yours. If you want a more in-depth explanation, the CliffsNotes is here.
As she reads, Meg realises something. I can only speculate, but after we’ve just seen Meg struggle with the anger her mother Gwen has with the world, and her stubborn approach to having a “perfect” Christmas, it seems as if Meg understands something new about her mother through these words. She finally understands what some of us never grow to know; her mother has so much trust, love and belief in her as a person, and that is why she has such high expectations for her. Gwen is only human. Gwen is trying her best to make a better world for her daughter, to push her to higher things, she just doesn’t always know the right way to do it. Nobody taught her how, after all.
Maybe it’s the closeness I feel to Meg having played her as a teenager, or maybe it’s the similar relationships I have in my own life that made me tear up when I watched Meg slowly realise her mother isn’t perfect. Either way, ATL has captured the essence of what good theatre is: a way to understand ourselves. Now, you can choose to watch it with your puppy, with your friends, or with some strangers you’ve wrangled into your house for that real audience experience — and what a pleasure it is to know you’ve got a sophisticated piece of Australian theatrical history to share with them.
Away is streaming now on Australian Theatre Live.
Australian Theatre Live hosts hundreds of hours of Australian theatre with new films added every four to six weeks. Subscribe here for $7.99 a month or $74.99 a year, with your first week free.
Images by Pia Johnson
Charlotte is the editor of Kaleidoscope Arts Journal, a little enby and a big mess. Their friends regularly worry that they might overdose on theatre.
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